Late Friday night and the crowds are surging like crazy outside 58 Bowery in New York’s Chinatown, and not because of the San Gennaro festival being celebrated nearby, a cacophony of bunting, zeppole, Hell’s Angels (Hell’s Angels?!), and gaudy carnival rides. No, this celebration is all about Alexander Wang’s 20th anniversary, a milestone that he’s recognizing with a new collection, The Matriarch, and showing in this still-needs-to-be-renovated building, which he and his family have purchased for future philanthropic purposes.
Inside, the vibe is smoky gaming den, with Mahjong tables set up, and do my eyes deceive me, but is that really Martha Stewart sitting there, playing Mahjong, a faint look of glazed ennui on her famous visage? (Martha can’t be winning, for once; not a good thing.) Later she’ll be joined at her table by Cardi B and her cute 7 year-old Kulture, who are mother-daughtering in fake-furred new season Wang. Meanwhile the rest of us, sitting on bleachers, are joined by a steady stream of show attendees who’ve finally been able to make their way in from outside. So many, in fact, and with so few benches left, that they’re forced to uncomfortably sit or crouch on the floor, spreading onto the runway, and currently, my feet; I have three displaced showgoers heavily sitting atop them, to the point, what with the long-ish wait for the show to begin, that I can no longer move, or feel, my legs. It’s runway DVT.
But I will tell you whose legs are moving, and at a fast and furious clip at that: Wang’s cast of models (pretty much all fresh faces; there’s no anniversary throwbacks here to the days when he’d regularly use the bold-faced supers; oh no, it’s all new, new, new) as well as friends of Wang’s like the A.I. guru Lucy Guo and actress Pom Klementieff who are walking the show for him. To a woman, they are striding out in Wang’s new definitive hemline, a length best described as if you’d pulled a tee-shirt on and seen it fall to the uppermost part of your thighs, and then thought to yourself, ‘Well, that’s plenty long enough’. Which is pretty appropriate, given Wang came up with something of a similar length to wear in the early days of his career, his T line of tees, a sartorial nod to the models-off-duty look he cannily spied and incorporated into his work—and which helped fuel his juggernaut success.
The Matriarch is an uber–short and uber-graphic (black, white and gray, for the most part) ode to the Alpha-Female, Wang told me recently at a collection preview, most meaningfully for him, his successful businesswoman mom Ying Wang. “The Alpha-Female, female, and the matriarch figure, and women in general,” he said, “are so inspiring for me because of all of these different facets that they encompass.” Beyond that, he was also looking at—very Alexander Wang, this—the relationship between the runway and the street today. “There’s so much character dressing and so much street casting going on,” he said, “so it feels like the runways are looking like the street and the street is looking like the runway. And I thought: Let’s strip it down, and go back to doing something that gives one message.”
Wang has focused his look on: curvaceous molded jackets, some with slashes that run under the breasts or skim across the hip bones, which were inspired by the paper works of Thai artist Vũ Dân Tân; tiny skirts worn with breast-cupped shirting or utilitarian leathers, perhaps accessorized with a swathe of fake fur or a puffed up collar, a bit like a neck brace for black tie whiplash; and glistening lace-trim slip dresses, actually knitted in some highly technologically advanced way. Wang has always been one for pushing the boundaries of the technology envelope and this season was no exception; at that same preview, he told me they’d finally been able to do a groundbreaking, entirely 3D-printable tread-solded kitten heel mule. (Other mules, in leather, were trimmed with zipper teeth.) This collection was certainly one the best he’s shown in a while; tight, focused, and pretty much devoid of nostalgia, despite its anniversary status. Though, truth be told, if it riffed on anything from his past, it was his time at Balenciaga, evident in the rounded sculpture of his faux fur, or a trio of gleaming cable knit chainmail effect tailored looks.
Wang finished off the show with a series of poncho looks for day or night, some in new pliable techno leather he’d developed, or in evening-y organza. The inspiration, he said, was the obsession he’d noticed when in China for people to shield themselves from the sun. “There’s so many memes about it,” Wang said, laughing. “Protection is taken to this whole other extreme level.”
But the poncho has a closer to home association. One day, Wang said, he’d been in his mother’s closet not long after she’d moved into the same NYC apartment building as him, and he couldn’t recognize anything of his in there. It turns out Mama Wang had been busy poncho-fying everything of his that she could, cutting open seams and adding in extra fabric. “It’s Alex Wang by Ying Wang!” his mom had told him, Wang recalled, roaring with laughter. Appropriate, then, that he should share his post-show bow with her, as the confetti fell from up above, and we all faced the long and late ride home.